Rethinking NASA's mission

September 15, 2003

Even after all the bad publicity that NASA has been pelted with, after the critics' call for the space shuttle program to be scrapped and the International Space Station to be mothballed, after a scathing 248-page report that said NASA didn't learn obvious lessons before the Columbia disaster, Americans still believe in space exploration.

Americans want NASA to keep boldly going out there, accepting the risks that shuttles may explode and astronauts will die. In a USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll, only 17 percent considered the risk of shuttle accidents "unacceptable." Another survey said the share of people who believe the government is spending too much on the space program dropped from 66 percent in 1971 to 35 percent in 2002.

Americans believe that space exploration is essential. But if you ask most people what exactly has the space program yielded in the past two decades, you'll probably get a blank stare and some mumbling about Tang and Teflon.

Truth is, manned space flight has yielded few major scientific discoveries. Aside from the formidable achievement of sending astronauts into orbit and bringing them back, NASA has struggled to maintain the attention--translated: funding--of an easily distracted public.

Retired Adm. Harold Gehman, who headed the probe in the Columbia disaster, appeared before the House Science Committee recently, the first installment in the country's important debate over the future course of the space program.

Gehman and the panel that investigated the loss of Columbia have pointed to systemic flaws in safety and other procedures, and called for a complete "change in culture" at NASA.

NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe says "We get it."

But the congressional hearings must yield more than reassurances from NASA leaders that they've finally learned their lesson. The hearings must chart a specific course for achievement, or the space program should be sharply curtailed.

So far, NASA seems to be focusing most of its energy on making the hardware fixes suggested by the Gehman panel. NASA is talking about launching another shuttle as early as next spring. By hurrying back into space, NASA probably hopes to avoid the bigger, tougher question: Why?

That question has flummoxed presidents for two decades. That's how long American leaders have lacked a clear, achievable vision for space exploration, or have simply lapsed into gibberish--let's go to Mars! Oops! That's really expensive. Never mind.

Right now the shuttle's main mission is to build and service the International Space Station, which is beginning to look a lot like a $100 billion white elephant in the sky. As part of the current congressional hearings, NASA should make its case why the station must be finished, a task scheduled to take about 15 more shuttle flights over several years. NASA needs to show why the critics are wrong when they argue that the space agency is wasting millions, maybe billions, on programs that could be devoted to science right here on Earth.

More than anything now, NASA needs missions that can yield scientifically valuable results. That means NASA must justify its focus on manned space flights or scrap them in favor of unmanned flights. That, after all, is where the real science has been done in recent years, an almost unblemished string of wondrous discoveries and triumphs that, since they did not include humans in orbit, most Americans largely ignored.

There are probes now heading for Mars and Saturn, and a new James Webb space telescope to be deployed in 2010, almost one million miles from earth, to take the place of the fabulously successful Hubble space telescope. Why not put the best and brightest at NASA to work on designing new unmanned probes, or finding ways to fly spacecraft by remote control, so that researchers can do important science in space with robots, not humans?

The NASA public relations machine has bedazzled many Americans, promoting the space age with its veneer of can-do optimism and gee-whiz gadgetry. And those shuttle launches are nothing if not impressive. But would most Americans be so sanguine if they realized that the shuttle part of the space program was soaking up hundreds of millions of dollars for--what? Experiments that mostly could be done better on the ground?

Of course, it's not only about the money. But then what is it about? NASA needs to provide a compelling answer to Congress before any more astronauts' lives are risked.